That Sound You Hear Is The Other Shoe Dropping

Remember me saying in the last post that I was not getting excited about my last scan until I heard the detailed results with measurements included and such? Here is why.
I had an appointment scheduled for 11:00 Wednesday to see how my swelling was progressing and to get the "official" results of the last scan, which should have been very close to the "preliminary" results I posted last week.
I thought this was going to be a 20 min conversation, no big deal so I scheduled an eye appointment for 12:40 the same day across town.
I was going to be real slick and sneak in there a little early so I could get my blood work started and we would not have to wait on that later and I would be on easy street to get to my eye Dr. on time. Oh, how wrong can one guy be.
I left the house at 9:45, got the the hospital at 10:15. Had my blood drawn by 10:30. Had a short wait in the waiting room before getting to the exam room at 10:55. OOOH it was going so good. The day went downhill from here.
Since it was 101 degrees in Charleston with the heat index yesterday and this should just be a quick in and out, I decided to only wear regular clothes plus a winter coat into the hospital for my short consultation today and opted to leave behind my normal outfit of gloves and toboggan hat.
I did not get seen until 12:05, (1 hour 10 mins later) by then my bald head was numb from the ears up, my hands were blue and shaking and my swollen feet, blocks of engorged ice. Still have 35 mins to make it to my eye Dr., yippee, it will take me 15 mins here and 20 mins to drive, no problem.
By 12:06 I knew I was screwed.
O'Brien started out the conversation by saying "you know that blood clot in your liver?"
"No, ... what blood clot in my liver?" I responded.
"Well it got substantially larger since your April CT scan."
"What blood clot in my liver?"
"The one that has been there since September of last year."
Like I said, the day went downhill quickly.
Come to find out I have, guess what, a bloodclot, on the impathaic artery or some shit.
It is on top of and/or using an existing tumor in the liver, on that artery as an anchor. So he is very concerned about this now and thinks that it is the cause of my swelling in the legs which is a side effect of unusual liver function, and the cause of many of my other symptoms. Now the swelling is the least of our concerns. It is like worrying about getting sunburned at the beach when a 100 foot tidal wave is about to crash down on you.
So he goes on to tell me the possible problems with the bloodclot.
1. It could move to the lungs causing some huge problem I cannot remember the name of, but essentially means death.
2. I could move to the somewhere else causing some other big word and death.
3. It could stay where it is and block blood flow to this lobe of the liver and cause the tissue to die.
None of these sounds like a good scenario to me so now we have a new public enemy #1. The Liver Bloodclot.
He wants to immediately do a 3 phase CT scan on the liver specifically. This will give us much more information about it than the typical scan we did last week. Also we need to do an Ultrasound to look at the clot right now. Like today.
So I have to now wait for the transport people to take me over to the Ultrasound dept in the other building via wheelchair.
15 mins later we are on our way. It is now 12:40. I get to the ultrasound dept and wait to check in there and then have to wait in the waiting room for another half hour. If it is possible it is colder in this building than the other one.
I'm sitting there in the hallway by myself, in a wheelchair, freezing to death thinking about all the new crap I just heard in the last 30 mins and start to cry. Well this a new low point in my life. It cant get any worse than this.
Finally they call me for the ultrasound. Anyone that has had one knows that this tool they use on you is a hard plastic wand like thing. They really have to press down hard on you to get a good reading. Well where your liver is, is right behind the lower rib cage on your right side, and it goes around to the center of your stomach.
I have not one ounce of meat on my ribs. It is just skin and then bone. I swear in the 30 mins it took her to do the tests she cracked 3 ribs. Then she moved to the stomach and started pressing down on my scar tissue from my surgery, and I had to stop the test. Could not take the pain. Then when she finished she said let me have the head guy, whoever, look at these pictures and see if we need to take anymore.
5 mins later she comes back in with 3 doctors. The head one says they were unclear on some of the pictures and the 4 of them proceeded to do the whole damn thing again. Only this time it was the Dr. running the ultrasound and they were pressing down even harder than the tech had been. So after another 30 mins of that the grueling pain was over.
So now it is about 2:30 and I have to go back to my Dr's. office. Still freezing, but now have broken ribs, and I am starving to death. This should be quick though. Just get my scheduled time for the CT and have him tell me the results of the ultrasound and I am out the door.
If it was only that easy.
Back to the waiting room at the cancer center.
Get to an exam room at about 3:00. Sit there freezing for another HOUR before he comes in to see me. 4:00 and I am exhausted and ready to collapse. We get the CT scheduled for 9 AM Tuesday morning and a follow up appointment with him for Wednesday afternoon.
The ultrasound showed that I had significant reduction in blood flow through one of the lobes of the liver due to the blockage of the clot. It was running at around 25% normal flow. This accounts for fatigue and swelling and should be causing a host of other problems as well. He is at a loss to explain how I am able to function like I do given these results. By all conventional logic I should be on my ass 20 hours a day.
It is just sheer will and determination. I refuse to be an invalid. Worked 6 hours today (Thursday) prior to doing this posting and am pretty worn out, but it was that or sit at home all day by myself and cry about it.
Anyway back to the story.
Then he tells me that I have to back the the blood draw lab so they can get a reading on my INR. Which is how thick or this your blood is and relates to clotting.
We will need this to decide whether I can go on the blood thinning medicine or not.
So I get all my paperwork and head over to the lab to get stuck in the other arm, remembering that I was stuck in the right arm at 10:30 this morning. The lab folks were surprised to see me again, not as surprised as I was to be there myself though I can assure you.
Get my blood drawn at 4:30 and then go to the desk to check out.
Leave the hospital a battered, bruised, starved, frozen, exhausted, depressed, and generally pissed off man at 4:45.
Including driving time to and from home. This little trip was about 8 hours.
Needless to say I never made it to the eye Dr.

Now all other problems are moot until we get the liver bloodclot taken care of. This just gets better and better doesn't it? Can a guy buy a friggin break here? What do I have to do slip a little bribe money in the offering plate? I am at a loss. I honestly do not know what is around the next turn. Maybe after Wednesday next week the picture will be a little clearer.
So I leave you this week in a shell shocked, frustrated, state of confusion.

Please help control the pet population, have your pets spayed or neutered.
Good night.

CT Results

Well I had some weird side effects after the last Chemo treatment. The biggest concern was the swelling in my feet and legs. So we did some tests to rule out major complications. We did an echo Doppler ultrasound of both of my legs to rule out blood clots. Then an ECG on the heart to rule out spreading of the disease to the heart or valves. Both of those came back ok.
Then we pushed up the CT scan a month ahead of schedule to look at the progression of the disease. Maybe we had some substantial growth of the tumors and that is why we have swelling, which could come from kidney failure or liver complications.
Today I had the CT scan. The preliminary results look pretty good. We do not have the measurements yet, and the Dr. was just talking to a resident and not the attending radiologist for the results, but here is what they said.
The liver metastases have maintained the same size since April. The Pancreas tumor seems to have decreased slightly in size. But we received no information on the Lymph node tumor. There is a 5 millimeter margin of error and we do not have the measurements yet, so I am not really going to get excited about anything here until I see the measurements.
Then there was the bad news, the CT showed a thickening of the Colon wall. There can be many reasons for this one of which is the spreading of the disease to the Colon. We got asked a bunch of questions about BM’s and such. And it has changed some recently. So we are just going to have to watch this now to see what develops.
He decided that we needed to get the swelling in control before we go through more Chemo so we have temporarily suspended that until the swelling is manageable. Right now it feels like walking in knee deep water. My feet have completely filled up and the water is moving up my legs, it is now up to the top of my calves. Also my stomach is swelling again. I look pregnant, and fat from the knees down, but skinny everywhere else. I really look like a cartoon character.
So we finally got prescribed a diuretic to try to get rid of the water. Thank God. It is becoming quite painful. I have no laces in my shoes anymore, and my socks cut into my calves about an inch deep.
I have another follow up next Wednesday to see how things are going. I will try to update the blog again after that to let you know what is coming next in the continuing saga. There is never a dull moment around here. You never know what to expect I go to the Dr.
I feel like I am strapped to a big wheel of fortune type contraption and instead of money values at each of spots where the clickers are there are symptoms and problems. Somebody spins the wheel and I go round and round and land on some new issue. Then we have to deal with it, and add it to the list of crap we are fighting.
That’s all for now.
Have a good week.
Thought for the week.
I want to be as good a person as my dog already thinks I am.

Last Day of Chemo Treatment for Round 3

Last day of treatment today. It is of course catching up with me now and I am out of commission for the next 5 to 7 days. Very tired and achy of course. Next visit to the hospital is the 7:30 Sunday morning trip for the White Cell Booster shot.
Cindy will be on nursing duty for Monday and Tuesday to serve my every desire: which is really just the desire for silence and sleep for about 4 days.
Not really anything new to report.
The swelling in my feet seems to be getting worse. They now look like two balloons. I would elevate them, but I have severe stomach pain when I try to do that have to sit right up with my feet on the floor which is worse than just laying them horizontal. So I normally don’t even try to elevate and just eek out every min of horizontal I can tolerate. One complication always leads to another. I just fight off whatever is the worst pain at the moment and then move on the next. The never ending story.
Other than that I am just trying to stay the course through one more round of treatment then we are supposed to take pictures to see if any of this is paying off or if we are just whistling Dixie.
On an unrelated note, the Simpsons movie is out and was great. You do not even have to be a fan of the show to keep up with it. It stands on its own pretty well and the whole audience laughed continually from start to finish. A bunch of people from work wanted to take me to it, so we went on Sunday morning the 29th. I even had popcorn and lemonade, Mmmm. $10 for a medium combo (med popcorn and med drink) can you believe those prices? Crazy huh?
That’s all for now.
Hope everybody has a better week than I will.
God bless us everyone (Tiny Tim, A Christmas Carol).